When thinking of ways to drive your search engine rankings, email might not typically be the first tool that comes to mind. As Google and other search engines don’t crawl or rank emails, writing emails for SEO purposes can seem like a waste of time. While email doesn’t directly impact your search engine rankings, you can make the most of it to affect your search engine optimization (SEO) results. In doing so, you will find that your SEO tactics can also have a positive impact on your email marketing efforts. Learning how to optimize your marketing strategy between different channels in your business is key for engaging your audience. Here are some of the ways in which email marketing and SEO complement each other.
Increase Web Traffic
Increase Web Traffic
One of the most obvious benefits of an email campaign is that it can drive traffic to your site. In case there are a bunch of noteworthy posts on your blog, don’t let them get lost in the archives. Send a weekly or monthly digest to recap the most significant blog posts and events on your website. This way, you’ll increase the visibility of these posts and drive more traffic to your website, escalating your chances of getting backlinked. You can mention some of the key points of your article in the email and invite recipients to finish reading it on your website. But the emphasis here should be on qualified traffic or visitors who are likely to make some sort of conversion after they arrive.
One of the best ways to do this is with personalization. And that’s likely why among all of the channels on which personalization is a possibility, marketers are more likely to use it on email than any other channel. If you’re living up to this expectation, you can be confident that your email newsletters aren’t just driving traffic to your site but driving targeted, qualified traffic that’s more likely to convert. And when you consider that the ultimate goal of every SEO strategy is to earn customers and revenue, this is a benefit that’s hard to overstate.
Fortunately, if you aren’t yet sending emails that are tailored to your audience’s interests, getting started doesn’t have to be all that complicated. The easiest way to begin is by segmenting your list.
For example, you should allow your new subscribers to choose which types of emails they want to receive. This way, subscribers only receive the emails they want, and the creators of these campaigns can create content that’s specific to each segment’s interests and preferences.
Email isn’t just powerful for shooting blast content to your subscribers. It also allows you to “set and forget” automated sequences so that every new subscriber who enters your list can see your highest-performing pages and posts on autopilot. Whether this is your “Contact” page, a specific blog post, or your Services page, it’s really powerful to have an automated traffic source from your own growing list so Google will see the traffic you’re getting and want to help amplify it. On that note, you can also refresh an old post that performed well by shooting it out to a new segment of your list that may not have read it yet. This has the same effect: Google sees that the page is getting engaged traffic and considers that in judgment. In fact, we often see a strong correlation between high ranking and time on site/low bounce rate.
Improve Content Strategy
Improve Content Strategy
Having an email list is more than just about running promotional campaigns and generating sales. It’s also a platform that gives you more in-depth information about your target audience. For example, you can use email list segments to create specific groups of people to understand the location, interests, job titles, education, gender, and more information related to your subscribers. You can also conduct surveys and polls using your email list to learn the questions and problems the users are having.
Then you can use this information to create better blog posts and videos that not only attract the ideal customers to your website but also rank well on Google. Email is a powerful marketing tool that can be used in many different ways to promote and grow a business. Use it to connect with other websites, blogs, and influencers to build more awareness and grow your business.
Boost On-Site Engagement
Boost On-Site Engagement
As well as giving you more quality content to rank for, reusing newsletter content will inspire you to try new approaches in your email marketing efforts. For example, if the aim of your newsletter is to share your company’s latest news and projects, and you mention four items, you can write short blog posts for each of these. Next time you set up a new campaign, rather than writing a long email, divide the stories throughout the newsletter.
Write punchy headlines and compelling descriptions for each story to encourage your subscribers to click and read more on your website. While there’s a difference between writing for search engines and humans, your skills for writing meta titles and meta descriptions will pay off when it comes to this. Adopting SEO writing techniques for email can also improve your deliverability and open rate.
Repurpose and Update Content
Repurpose and Update Content
If you write long-form newsletters, reuse the content as a blog post. Rewriting your newsletter as a blog and implementing keyword phrases ensures that Google indexes your content. Reusing email content for blog material gives you more quality content to rank for and allows you to share your content elsewhere. Through social media and other messaging apps, your insights can be read by audience members who are not yet subscribed to your list.
Reduce Bounce Rates
Reduce Bounce Rates
Once you get those complaints, questions, and desires straight from your audience, you not only get to go write a post that’s sure to make Google happy, but you also get to shoot that post right out to that same email list to give it an initial high-quality boost. Basically, you’re asking them what they really want (getting the intention behind the query) and then sending them exactly that. These visitors are highly qualified – you know that the content will make them happy, thereby lowering your bounce rate and encouraging them to stay on your website for longer. Instead of just doing the keyword research, writing the post, and hoping for it to perform, you can give yourself a boost all with one simple survey, post, and email.
Encourage Social Shares and Reviews
Encourage Social Shares and Reviews
Another part of the feted search engine algorithms is the shares and likes on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Use Key Metrics for SEO Purposes
Use Key Metrics for SEO Purposes
You can analyze your email marketing statistics and use the results to improve your SEO campaign. For example, you can send an email newsletter and determine which of your articles are the most popular. With that information in your hands, you can curate more topics that appeal to your target audience. You can also use your email to identify which of your social media channels elicit the most engagement.
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can send your SEO campaign to new heights. The more you know about how these two marketing concepts are related, the more you can use them to your advantage. The next time you send out an email, remember that what you’re actually doing is inviting your target audience to get to know your brand better.
Improve Brand Reputation and Authority
Improve Brand Reputation and Authority
Authority is king in the world of SEO. Put simply, the better reputation your brand has, the higher your chances are to get backlinked by A-list publishers, and this way, promote your content and attract a wider audience. Building a high reputation is a time-consuming process, but it’s an absolute lifeline for higher conversions, more promoting opportunities, and better online visibility.
Here’s what helps to build your brand reputation:
- Quality content. The content you create should cover hot topics that interest your subscribers. But most importantly, it should link with authoritative sources and be relevant to your brand.
- Quality traffic. Place your content on influential websites with a vast audience and make sure it has something to do with the subject of your business.
Create personalized subject lines and provide your readers with up-to-date content, like upcoming holidays or events. Make sure you elaborate the feedback system to showcase your expertise and your willingness to help the subscribers in case they have any difficulties with using your service or products. This will reduce your unsubscribe rate and position you as a trustworthy source of information, encouraging users to come back to your website.
Combine SEO and Email Marketing Strategies for Better Rankings
Combine SEO and Email Marketing Strategies for Better Rankings
As you optimize email marketing and use it with SEO to drive your brand's success, it will tie closely to your customer funnel. As your email strategy gets implemented, watch your open rates to see how well your different segments respond to content at each stage of the funnel. The more data you can collect, the easier it becomes to make data-driven decisions that power growth and development.
Use your email strategy to draw people through the funnel. The content they engage with, the information you can research, and the information they offer about themselves will all help you classify each prospect into a potential buyer persona category and your estimate of where they fall on the buyer's journey. This insight will then help you to target them with content specifically developed for this persona at this stage of the journey. This email content, along with conversations with sales representatives, will play a large role in nurturing these prospective customers into and through the middle stage of the sales funnel
As customers transition to the middle of the sales funnels, they shift from educating themselves about all their options and begin instead to evaluate the options they see in front of them. Keeping the prospect engaged with your organization through quality, data-driven email content will keep your brand on their shortlist and keep them moving towards conversion.
Monitor every stage of your email segmentation to better understand what customers look at and to optimize email marketing. Know the content that interests them and what receives low engagement metrics. Put your research on keywords and terms to work to ensure that the content you build will engage the interested parties and monitor how well the email lists then perform. Email marketing and SEO can work well together, powerfully driving customers, particularly through the middle of the sales funnel. Understanding how to get these two sectors to work together and power growth will help brands enhance the power of the sales funnel.
Email is the best way to take control and drive highly targeted traffic to each page of any website you lay your hands on. When done right, that means you’re driving traffic that you know will be interested in the page or content, will share it, and will ultimately give each page an advantage right as it’s published. This gives the entire site a significant boost, SEO-wise. If you have an additional focus on conversions, you can boost those by making sure your emails are highly targeted with customer journeys in line.
If you need help in implementing SEO and email marketing so that they work synergically, Universal Creative Solutions offers marketing consulting and strategy consulting. We can dive into how to better strategize your lead generation and lead nurturing funnel so they guide users along the customer journey, making it a seamless experience. Schedule a consultation call and let us help you grow and improve your business.
